Her Family Talks To The Dead | Irish Ghost Story | Episode 150

Dale Grant Park, welcome to the Bookaholic podcast. Great to be here. Yes, glad to have you here. And today we're going to be talking about your book, We Are Shadows, an Irish ghost story. And it's really a beautiful cover and it's in this nice green. I'm not sure if the camera's picking up this Irish emerald, deep emerald green and it's got a ghost profile and a tombstone on the front. And so it's just kind of like the perfect illustration to this story. Did you have a hand in creating it, the cover? I worked with a cover designer who is in Ireland. So yeah, we went through a few iterations. And he did all three covers in the trilogy. So they kind of all have a similar vibe and look to him. He has an image on each one. You don't always see that profile of the woman right away. Right, okay. Yeah, I can see that. Well, some people don't. You got it right away. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then he did this one. This is book three and he's got a ghost up in the clouds. So you kind of have to take a second look at that one. That's a hunting and patterning. And then this has got the body in the bushes that you don't really notice right away. Well, you know what, you're thorough. He did all the covers with this same kind of, yeah, the Celtic knots and things that go around the edges. Yes, that's actually very beautiful. One thing that I really splurged for was having an Irish professional cover designer. Well, it's beautiful. And they say, you know, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. But we do. Yes. All day, every day. Well, I will say when you showed the third book in the trilogy, it almost on camera looked like it was 3D. I don't know if you want to test that between somebody, you know, and you looking at it, but it was almost 3D. So it was very kind of, not frightening, but, you know, just a little ghostly looking. Well, it kind of pops out at you. Yes, absolutely. Now, when I first received this book, it brought me great joy when I turned on the back to see my name is going to be in this book. So we've got three sisters, and it's spelled exactly the way I spell my name. So we've got three sisters, Moira, Deirdre, which of course is me, and Nuala, am I pronouncing that right? Nuala. Okay, Nuala. So you got three sisters. And like I said, you know, I had to interview you, if nothing else, for the fact that my name is in the book, and it's spelled exactly the way that I spell mine. So we've got three sisters here. So do you have sisters, Gayle? And is that what inspired you? Maybe your siblings? I have one sister. Okay. I have one sister, Kelly, and she's a writer as well. She's done a time travel series. But the names all come from my Irish ancestry, and I have about eight cousins in Ireland, and some of them have moved over into Europe. And one of them is Deirdre, and one of them is Nuala, and one of them is Marion, but I kind of tweaked her name to be Moira. So it's my Irish cousins' names. Wow. Very interesting. Well, let's dive into the story a little bit. So Moira has been seeing ghosts since childhood. So where did you get this idea from about Moira and seeing ghosts? What led you down that path? Well, I wanted to have a ghost story where the ghosts were more real, not chain-rattling, moaning, phantasmic, sheet-covered ghosts. Yeah, yes. So I wanted them... The book is really more about our view into the afterlife. Like, what happens when we die? Are we still an entity? Is it possible to communicate with our loved ones who have passed on? And a lot of these stories, each book contains four or five vignettes of these three sisters helping a specific spirit to move on into the afterlife, because they're stuck here for some reason. Whether they were killed prematurely and we need to find their killer, or they have unfinished business, that kind of thing. So I have done a lot of family history, genealogy work, and a lot of these stories have the kernel of truth in my own ancestors' lives. So I kind of tweaked them a little bit and elaborated a little bit, but there are some actual encounters with spirits that have happened in my family. So that's where it all started. I wanted to kind of showcase these stories. Oh, wow. Well, tell us one. All right. I don't know if you had a chance to read book one yet, but in the beginning, Moira travels to Tralee to get a birth certificate to help her client solidify his case as an heir. And as she's coming back home, she's driving along this road and she falls asleep at the wheel. And this incident when she was five years old and her little friend from across the street came over to play with her and got hit by a car and died right in front of her. Oh, no. Everyone wondered why Moira wasn't grieving, but this Julia, her little friend, immediately was right next to her as a spirit and she could see and hear her. So why should she grieve? Because she hadn't really lost Julia. So that was her introduction to the afterlife and it kind of opened that door into the spirit world where she could now converse with the spirits. So she's driving as an adult now. She's driving along this road and falls asleep at the wheel. And she gets woken up by Julia's voice yelling, Moira, wake up, you're going to crash. And she wakes up and turns the wheel in time to avoid a crash. And she calms herself and talks to Julia saying, thank you for saving my life. But that really happened to my cousin who was going through a messy divorce, left home in tears, was distraught. And she was driving down the road and fell asleep at the wheel. And she was woken up by her deceased sister, Brenda, who said, Debbie, turn the wheel, you're going to crash. I mean, word for word in the book. And Debbie woke up in time to avoid hitting the median. Her sister, Brenda, was three years younger than her and had died when Debbie was 16 and Brenda was 14. So I had to put that in the book. That was a true instance where a spirit from someone we love who had passed on intervened in her life to help her. So that was one. That is amazing. That is absolutely amazing. And I'm so glad you told that story because that makes it even more enticing for a person to want to read your books because interwoven in all three, you have similar real life experiences through all three. Exactly. And if you go to my website, gailgrantpark.com, I have a lot of the behind the scenes stories that really happened that I'm discussing in the book. So you can hear about those two stories. Absolutely. Well, we certainly will have your website link in the podcast show notes in the video description box on YouTube for people to dive further in to those back stories. So you didn't publish your first novel until later in life. So what gave you the courage to start writing seriously in 2019? Well, I joined a writing group as my daughter is also a writer. She writes poetry and she was in a writer's group in Washington state and she invited me to join her. It was a group of maybe five or six people who got together monthly and did writing prompts and sprints together and gave little lessons to one another to help each other with their writing craft. And I joined that group. I don't know why she actually invited me because I wasn't really writing at the time. I mean, I've written journals my whole life and I've written histories of my parents and my grandparents and my husband's family. I've done family history writing. But when I got into this group, one of the persons was an editor, had just finished an editing course. Another one was a graphic designer and another one had published before on Amazon self-published. So we had this group of experienced people and they decided to publish an anthology. So I wrote a little short story in their anthology and it got published. And I thought, well, this is easy. I can do that. It kind of went through the ropes with me and helped me to see the process. So it wasn't too intimidating. And then after that, I just got excited about writing a full novel. Wow, that's, and you know, I've listened to you. So your daughter's a writer, your sister is a writer and you are a writer. How do you explain that? That's not, I don't think many families have at least like three writers in a family. It's really kind of wild. I'm not sure. Well, my mother has written poetry her whole life too. And so she's, I think she's the creative impetus for that. She is 96 right now and she still is writing poetry. Wow, that's amazing. And that's wonderful. That's also very inspiring to hear because I think a lot of people think that if you live to be 96, that you just sit around, but that's wonderful to hear that she's still doing her creative gift. Yeah, she's still going. Jess barely gave up her keys last year, but before that she was driving her convertible around town all the time. The convertible? So she's, yeah. I got good genes. I love that. Well, you found your husband's military career for 24 years. And how did living internationally influence your storytelling? Well, I think it was a major influence because, I mean, I know people who have never left the little town that they grew up in and not having that influence of other cultures, other ideas, it can be really stifling. And I think being out there and meeting people and getting that out of my shell, I mean, we all kind of feel a little intimidated meeting new people or being shy. I'm basically an introvert, but I was forced to be an extrovert by being out there and meeting new people, or you don't have any friends and you move every three or four years. You've got to put yourself out there. Absolutely. We traveled a lot. And when we were stationed in Brussels, Belgium, it was just a quick hop, skip and a jump over to England and Ireland. And so we did take a trip to Ireland and I met these cousins, my Irish cousins, for the first time and got to know them. And we helped each other with the family history genealogy part. But getting to know them was really helpful with the books because I would then send them manuscripts and say, is this how you say this? Trying to do the Irish slang and the culture. And they say, well, no, that's more Northern Ireland. We say this or we do it this way. And they sent me recipes which are in the book and things like that. So it was very helpful to immerse myself in the culture through getting to meet these long lost cousins. Absolutely. Well, would you describe your series as cozy mysteries? I call them cozy paranormal mysteries. So I have to put the paranormal in there to get ghost elements because a lot of cozy mysteries are just murders or whodunits. But the paranormal element is really the main thing. But yeah, there's no bad language. There's no graphic violence or sex or anything like that. So family, teenagers can read it without any issues. And my 96-year-old mother can read it without being horrified. Exactly. Exactly. I get it. I get it. Now, did you, did this, even though it's ended up being a trilogy, did you start off with the fact that I want to write a trilogy or did somehow the sisters spoke to you and then everything just came tumbling down? You've got it. Exactly. I wrote book one, We Are Shadows, as a standalone. I thought, well, I poured everything into it. Here's my masterpiece. And I knew it was going to be a bestseller. So I sent it out to publishers, indie publishing companies, and what do you call them? Agents. I just knew it was going to get picked up. But it didn't, of course. I got crickets. And I heard from one agent who said, well, we really like the concept and I like the book, but we like our authors to write series. Is this a series? And I said, wait, wait. Yes, it is. I'm writing book two as we speak. Yes, it is. So I started writing book two and I finished. It took me about two years to write book one. It took me eight months to write book two because I had the characters and I had the premise and I didn't have to do all the research like I had with book one. And I wrote back to him. Book two is about ready, but I never heard back from him. So I said, well, I can't wait. I've got to publish these. So I self-published. And then book three came on the heels of book two. Within four months, I had that because like you said, I felt like I was now one of the Gallagher girls and I was just following them around, writing down what they said and did. And it just all came out. The more I wrote, the more I could write. Ah, I love it. I love it. Well, so now are you working on a memoir and a children's book right now? I did. I just finished the children's book and it's called Rain or Shine, It's Camping Time. And it actually is based on a story of my own childhood where I was eight and my sister was five and we went on a camping trip. One of those stories that are passed on. Like, remember that time we went camping and that thing happened? And I said, that's got to be in a children's picture book. And I finally found an illustrator who I really clicked with and he painted the care. He's a watercolorist and he painted the pictures exactly how I had envisioned it. That came out in November this past year. Oh, wonderful. Okay. All right. So you might want to send me a copy of it. Oh, I will. Okay. And then the memoir is something that I wrote an autobiography for my family, but now I'm pulling out the emblems, the elements of my spiritual journey. And that is going to be the memoir. So working on that now. Wow. Well, we certainly, you know, whenever you have that finished, you certainly can come right back on this channel and tell us all about it. To have you back as a guest. That'd be awesome. You know, when you have these experiences with the afterlife, it is a spiritual experience. I mean, we all ask the question, what is this life about? Is there anything after this? And having had that communication is like, well, yeah, there is more to life than this. Not all there is. So it really impacts you spiritually to have that confirmation that this is not all that happens to us, that there is life after death. Can I tell you one more true incident that got its way into the book? Please do. It's about, it happened to my mother. My dad passed away in 1995. And shortly after that, she was mowing the lawn, which is a job that he usually did. And she's on this big rider lawnmower. And she's, the grass is wet. It had rained. And she got too close to this bank that she started sliding down into a creek that was at the bottom of the bank. And then she panicked. And she's trying to steer and she's trying to touch the brake and it's still sliding. And she heard my dad's voice say, Annie, you dumbass, turn off the engine. Oh, she turned off the engine and the thing stopped. And she said, I knew it was Donald because he used to call his best friend a dumbass all the time. It was a term of endearment for him. And so he, she said, I knew it was Donald because he said that. And then she got out and she pushed, you know, she's like, was in her 80s. She's pushing this lawnmower up the hill. She said, I just pushed it up like it was nothing. I knew he was there helping me push that lawnmower up out of the creek. Oh my. So in the book, that was the true experience. And in the book, I put it in as Nula is in a church and she's all alone. And then she gets locked in there. She can smell smoke. The church is starting to burn. She panics. She doesn't know what to do. She goes to the door. It's locked. And she hears her deceased father whom they call Da. She heard Da's voice saying, Nula, you idiot, grab the candlesticks off the altar and break the window. So she grabs the candlesticks, breaks the window and is able to get out. And she says to her sisters, I knew it was Da because he called me an idiot. And that was his term of endearment for it. And it tweaked my mother's story a little bit, but those little ideas of the truth gets in there. Wow. Well, somehow, some way I feel like you were destined to become a writer and tell us these stories and give us a hint of what may be to come. I just think that's just a little speaking from the spirituality that you've been gifted. Yeah, I like to think so. I hope my books will touch people, not just on an entertainment level, but on a thought-provoking level where they think, well, what do I believe about that? It's interesting. I made up a book kit and gave it to the library for their readers group. And after the group read it, I went and talked about it. And a couple of people say, yeah, I don't believe in ghosts and I don't believe in that. But it was an okay story. And then this woman said, yeah, I don't really buy that. But as we started talking, she said, I had a dog who I loved and he was my child. And I had to put him down and it just devastated me so much. And then a few weeks after his passing, I was sitting at the chair just mourning. And I felt him lean up against my leg like he always used to do. I felt the pressure. I sensed it was him. And he was there for about 10 minutes. And then he left and she starts crying. And I think these stories cause us to think about, well, have I had any experiences where I maybe sensed something, sensed the presence of someone or had a feeling that I was being watched over or something. And so I think it gets people thinking. Absolutely. Well, I see also on here, you have like a little finalist sticker on here, American Writing Award. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, that was on book one. And again, as I said, if you turn it over, you'll see it got like five different awards on the back. You can see five little stickers on the back of the book. So there's like a Reader's Choice and American Writers Association and Reader Favorites. There's four or five of them. And when I first did the book, and you're always your own marketer when you're self-published. Even traditionally published writers, they have to do most of the marketing. So I entered all these contests and placed in many of them. So all those stickers went on the first book. And then after that, I thought, I can't afford to keep doing it. I kind of slowed down a little bit on entering contests. But the first one got a lot of kudos for from contest winners though. Well, wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. And as I said earlier, we will certainly have a link to Gail's website and the podcast show notes and the video description box on YouTube. And you will also have a link for you to purchase. Not only each standalone, each book that can be standalone or the whole series. We'll have everything there just for your buying pleasure. Gail, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's been fun. Thank you.